Monday, August 18, 2008

Harry Potter videogame being "evaluated" due to movie delay

Ron - Image 1How much grief must a muggle bear? Just days after news hit that Warner Brothers was pushing the release of the sixth movie in the septology into 2009 comes this quote from an Electronic Arts spokesman regarding the fate of the videogame adaptation:

We are making a great game that Harry Potter fans will really enjoy we are evaluating the impact of the movie date change,


The game isn't officially delayed yet. It's not unheard of for a tie-in to be released some time after the movie itself hits, but before? Unlikely. It's probably a safe bet that Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince (the game) will also be pushed back to launch alongside the movie.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, more time in the oven is generally good for the development of a videogame. Hopefully Half Blood Prince will be the better for it, the Potter games have always played it safe design wise and as a result ended up kind of middling. Order of the Phoenix was a step in the right direction, with its immersive, fully rendered and explorable Hogwarts Castle, fingers crossed that the dev team sees this as an opportunity to get even more ambitious.

Yes, I totally made up the word "septology".

disapparates